Sunday, 26 October 2014

Advance Display fined £17,677 after worker's ankle was crushed in a woodworking machine

Advance Display Ltd, of Loughborough was fined £17,677 (Inc. costs) after a worker's ankle was crushed.

The circumstances were:

For certain tasks on the machine, the operators used to have a mobile remote-controlled pendant in their hand to control the machine.

However, the pendant had been broken for more than three and a half years and Advance Display Ltd had never replaced nor repaired it.

On 28 January 2013, a worker was trying to flush lubricant through the grease unit on the machine.

He had one foot on the floor and the other on a base plate of the computer-controlled machine.

Because the pendant did not work he asked a colleague to turn the machine on.

The colleague could not see whether or not the worker was clear of the machine.

As it had already been programmed, it immediately moved forward, crushing his foot between the base plate and the moving bed.

The HSE inspector said:

“The incident was entirely preventable and stemmed from a failure to keep the remote control pendant – a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment – in good repair and efficient working order. This, coupled with the lack of a safe system of work, led to a man needlessly suffering an extremely severe injury. The company was grossly negligent and failed to consider the risk to employees engaged in certain tasks on the machine.”